The Mercury Tree

The Mercury Tree (sometimes referred to as Mercury Tree or TMT) is an experimental prog-rock band from Portland, Oregon, which composes and performs with microtonal tunings such as 17edo, 34edo, and others.

History

Lineup changes

The Mercury Tree performing „Stay the Corpse” at Dante's, Portland, 7 September 2023. Oliver Campbell (left), Connor Reilly (middle), Ben Spees (right)

The band began as a solo project of Benjamin Boyer Spees (commonly referred to as Ben Spees) in 2004. It evolved into a full band in 2006, with a lineup featuring James Crutcher on bass, Avery Cooper on guitar, Mike Byrne on drums, and Spees handling vocals, keyboard, and guitar. This iteration of the band released a self-titled LP in 2007, followed by the Eerie EP and Eerie B-sides in 2009. In 2010, the band released the Descent EP, which introduced Liz Kuhn on flute and djembe and made Alan Johnson the bassist.

Ben renewed The Mercury Tree in 2011 with Alan Johnson becoming the new official bassist of the band and Connor Reilly being the drummer, releasing their first studio album, Pterodactyls. By 2012, during the production of Freeze in Phantom Form, the lineup changed again with Aaron Clark taking over as bassist and contributing vocals. In subsequent years, The Mercury Tree collaborated with Red Forman on the Family Style EP, and in 2014, Oliver Campbell joined as bassist and backing vocalist for the Countenance LP, whose involvement stemmed from a recommendation by Aaron Clark, who was retiring from the band.

The 2016 release Permutations featured the core lineup of Ben Spees (vocals, keyboard, guitar), Connor Reilly (drums), and Oliver Campbell (bass, vocals). Guest contributors included Tony Mowe (saxophone on "Ether/Ore" and "Sympathesizer") and Aaron Clark (guitar on "Sympathesizer" and "Deep Five").

In 2019, the band collaborated with Deja Igliashon, also known as Cryptic Ruse, on Cryptic Tree, which included Neil Haverstick on oud for "Soaring Xenharmonic Plantain".

Deja became an official member, playing the guitar on their 2019 album Spidermilk, before leaving the band. The 2019 release brought back guest musician Tony Mowe, (saxophone on "Ark of an Ilk" and "Disremembered").

Their current lineup consists of Oliver, Connor and Ben as of their 2023 album, Self Similar, which had Damon Waitkus (vocals, acoustic guitar, hammered dulcimer, psaltery, and tongue drum on "Recursed Images" and "After the Incident"), Gabriel Riccio (vocals on "Self Similar"), Deja Indigo Yerger (electric guitar on "Self Similar"), Tom Shad (piccolo bass on "Self Similar"), and Nick Prol (vocals on "Binary").

Related bands

In 2017, avant-prog band Nick Prol and the Proletarians, led by Nick Prol, debuted with its album Loon Attic. This band branched off of The Mercury Tree, as Ben Spees and Connor Reilly are official members, while Connor is present in many of the songs. This band's 2020 album, An Erstwisle Alphabestiary: Book One showcases musicians such as Jack Tickner, Jerry King, Mohadev and Dave Newhouse.

Ventifacts, microtonal folk songwriting duo between Ben Spees and Damon Waitkus from Jack O' The Clock, featuring Connor Reilly as the drummer and Oliver Campbell as the bassist who made his appearance on the tracks "Groaning Under the Evidence" and "Dog Day Music", as well as Emily Packard playing the violin and viola, debuted with a self-titled full-length album in September. That album was followed by the Chronic Town EP from 2022, which featured all 3 members of the band and Daimon himself.

Musical style

The band's songs are characterized by the frequent usage of odd-time signatures, mixed meter, polyrhythms, polymeters, counterpoint and looping. Ben's vocals commonly have reverb and delay applied to them. Their microtonal music is mostly in 17edo, neutral intervals and chromatic movement. The genres explored by TMT include prog-rock, math rock, psychedelic rock, avant-prog, post-prog. Most of their music has lyrics and vocals, with a few exceptions.

Inspirations

The Mercury Tree's biggest inspirations include Cheer-Accident, King Crimson, Porcupine Tree, Slint, Botch, Cave In, and Thinking Plague.

Musical evolution

The band's musical style has evolved over the years, becoming more eclectic with every release, them experimenting with quartertones before becoming fully microtonal.

2007-2009

In this period of time, The Mercury Tree used electronic drums in songs like "Vacant Stares" and "Colorfalls" (The Mercury Tree), "Overflow" (Eerie B-Sides) and "Down the Pipe" (Eerie EP), akin to Ben's previous contributions for mac games' soundtracks, such as Deimos Rising. Most of the songs for this period of time remained mostly alternative, with the occasional usage of mixed meter in tracks like "Lab Rat" (The Mercury Tree) and many of the songs on Eerie EP. An instrument present in the band's early works is the keyboard, which uses a specific piano timbre.

2010-2014 (pre-microtonal)

This era of TMT showcased the beginning of their style, much of the music deriving inspiration from King Crimson, Porcupine Tree, and other classic prog bands . In the Descent EP, songs like "Running the Gamut" and "Preconceived Notions" display denser harmonies and intricate rhythmical structures, though songs such as "Julienne" still showed a transitional period for their stylistic development.

The Pterodactyls LP turned more progressive, including locrian harmonies and a more frequent appearance of mixed meter, though there being exceptions like "Velociraptor".

Their second studio album, Freeze in Phantom Form primarily resembled math rock songs. "Inflexus", for instance, makes usage of reversed samples, while "Proteus" showcases syncopated rhythms and looping.

The collaborative EP with Red Forman called Family Style EP introduced screamed vocals (from Oliver Campbell) and rhodes, which came to be something encountered in their upcoming release of Countenance.

2014-2016

With the release of the Countenance LP, Ben Spees made use of microtonality for the first time, making use of quartertones on the second song, "Vestigial". This LP had elements of jazz in songs like "Mazz Jathy" and "Jazz Hands of Doom". "False Meaning" introduced and made use of quartal harmony, and along with "Pitchless Tone", "Vestigial", "Otoliths", "To Serve Man" and "Artifacture" featured screams, having a heavier tone. The keyboard timbre found in their earlier stuff was no longer present from then on.

The band showcased its most progressive release which wasn't exclusively microtonal in their album Permutations. The members were inspired by more avant-prog bands, as they were aiming for a weirder sound. The musical evolution is most evident in "Exhume the Worst" and "Placeholder" which utilize the heavier aspect of Countenance, while displaying jazz-influenced harmony, especially in the latter. This release also contains the first fully microtonal Mercury Tree song, "Ether/Ore" which is in the carlos alpha tuning, alongside prominent microtonality on "Symptoms" and "Permutations". This album represents a cornerstone for their rhythmic experimentation, an example being "Unintelligible".

2018-present

Ben Spees was mainly inspired by Brendan Byrnes's Micropangea, Wendy Carlos's Beauty in The Beast and Sevish's music early in his discovery of xenharmony. The band debated at the time whether or not become fully microtonal, to which head member of Cheer-Accident Thymme Jones recommended that they did.

On their 2018 collaboration with Cryptic Ruse, Cryptic Tree EP , there were two tunings used: 23edo and 17edo.

With Spidermilk's debut in 2019, the songs were all in 17. Some songs like "Ark of An Ilk" have a psychedelic aspect to them, while others like "Superposition of Silhouettes" were adapted from 12 into 17 and modified to be more microtonal. Other songs leaned heavily into microtonality, such as "I Am a Husk", "Vestments", "Disremembered" and "Tides of the Spine".

The Self Similar LP from 2023 uses 34edo and 68edo alongside 17edo.

Songwriting process

The Mercury Tree's music is developed and refined primarily during rehearsals. Ben Spees typically creates initial drafts, writing approximately two-thirds of a song before presenting it to the rest of the band for completion. However, Spees is not the sole songwriter. Other band members also contribute to the creative process; for example, Oliver Campbell has written songs including "Placeholder" and "Interglacial."

Discography

• The Mercury Tree (2007)
  • Five-Seven EP (2007), a selection of songs from the self-titled LP.
• Eerie EP (2009)
  • Eerie B-Sides (2009)
• Descent EP (2010)
• Pterodactyls (2011)
• Freeze In Phantom Form (2012)
• Family Style EP (2014)
• Countenance (2014)
• Permutations (2016)
• Cryptic Tree EP (2018)
• Spidermilk (2019)
• Self Similar (2023)

External Links

• Bandcamp discography
• The Mercury Tree's YouTube channel
• Promotional Facebook page
• UnTwelve interview (see also: UnTwelve)